In fact, you can combine the previous prefixes with the standard s-suffix, for example: L”Connie”s is a std::wstring! U”Connie”s is a std::u32string. And so on.

Done, right? Not yet!! In fact, there are raw string literals to consider, too. For example: R”(C:\Path\To\Connie)”, which is a const char* to “C:\Path\To\Connie” (well, this saves you escaping \ with \\).

And don’t forget the combinations of raw string literals with the above prefixes and optionally the standard s-suffix, as well: LR”(C:\Path\To\Connie)”, UR”(C:\Path\To\Connie)”, LR”(C:\Path\To\Connie)”s, UR”(C:\Path\To\Connie)”s, and more!

Oh, and in addition to the standard std::string class, and other standard std::basic_string-based typedefs (e.g. std::wstring, std::u16string, std::u32string, etc.), there are platform/library specific string classes, like ATL/MFC’s CString, CStringA and CStringW. And Qt brings QString to the table. And wxWidgets does the same with its wxString.

Wow! And I would not be surprised if I missed some other string variation out 😊

P.S. With all this string variety (maybe too much…), what about adding to the C++ Standard Library some convenient functions for at least common string operations like trimming spaces and converting strings to upper case and lower case? All in all, C++ does already have rocket-science stuff like Bessel functions in its Standard Library. While, back in the old MFC days, CString already offered convenient methods like Trim, MakeLower and MakeUpper, just to name a few.

Sample slide: Introducing the std::string class

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